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18 May 2023
I'm taking a break from publishing on this blog — it might be permanent, I'm not sure. Before signing off, I thought I'd share some articles I wish I'd published: exit interview thoughts on Fairhaven…
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8 April 2022
I love rules of thumb — in the right place at the right time they're invaluable. Working out how much you need to retire isn't one of those places. The 4% rule is a dumb rule that a lot of smart peopl…
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18 February 2022
Lots of people reassess their insurance after repaying the mortgage and cancel their income protection. I often think that's a mistake. Mortgage-free years are usually when you build the wealth that f…
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28 February 2020
What does "retirement" actually mean to you? For many of the people I talk to, early retirement isn't really about stopping work — it's about changing their relationship to work, or getting freedom to…
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11 October 2019
I love books that swing for the fences. The Last Safe Investment is one — a personal development book with a strong financial focus. I disagree with chunks of it, and the authors strawman mainstream a…
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16 August 2019
How would you invest if you were 60 with $5 million and spent $100,000 a year? Some of my clients in this position sit heavily in defensive assets. Others sit 80-90% in growth assets. Both are right —…
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7 June 2019
New Zealand and Australia have very different approaches to funding pensions. Despite many other similarities between our countries, you can consider us at opposite ends of the spectrum on this set of…
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15 February 2019
My son is starting to get into video games. In many games, you can choose between "easy mode" and "hard mode". Sometimes I think we unnecessarily put our lives on hard mode, when we'd lead much more m…
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9 October 2018
The 4% rule says you can safely withdraw 4% of your retirement portfolio each year — so multiply your desired spending by 25 to get your number. I don't like it. Retirement planning is not the place f…
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30 July 2018
The future is uncertain — but we still need to plan for retirement. Plenty of variables are unknowable: when you'll retire, how long you'll live, what returns you'll get. The one I want to focus on is…
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8 February 2018
The NZ news media keeps warning of "frightening" long-term consequences when people use KiwiSaver to buy a first home. This is a false dilemma. Owning a mortgage-free home by retirement is one of the…
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29 December 2017
Once you've captured the employer match and the Government contribution, the tangible benefits of putting more into KiwiSaver largely stop. So why does my wife contribute 8% of her income? Behavioural…
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11 November 2017
Some links to interesting articles in published media such as The Press, The Sunday Star Times, and The Herald from recent months: John McCrone wrote a valuable article about "How to succeed at the re…
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27 October 2017
Many people want to get to a position where they can "live off the interest" in retirement. It's a laudable goal, but for most people it's unrealistic, and aiming for it creates unnecessary pressure.…
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17 August 2017
Retirement is often a euphemism for being displaced from the workforce — and involuntary unemployment is one of the few things with an enduring negative impact on life satisfaction. Career risk is rea…
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11 August 2017
The FIRE movement — financial independence, retire early — is alluring. The core lesson is simple: increase your savings rate, live frugally, and you can retire decades early. I'm sympathetic to it, a…
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26 June 2017
A weekend round-up of money writing worth your time. Janine Starks on ten cures for Money Anxiety Disorder. Susan Edmunds on over-50s caught short by job loss or ill health, and on the trauma-insuranc…
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1 May 2017
Retirement planning is shot through with uncertainty — your costs, your health, whether NZ Super will exist as we know it, what your investments return. Zoom out further and radical technologies, from…
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14 July 2016
After working in Australia for ten years, I have a fair amount of money locked away in an Australian superannuation fund. As a resident of New Zealand, I have the ability to transfer these funds into…
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5 December 2014
Common advice is to save a fixed percentage of your income every year for retirement, starting as early as possible. It's reasonable in the abstract. But it doesn't really match how life actually work…